1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system for processing pharmaceutical data. More particularly, the present Invention pertains to a system that maintains the confidentiality of a patient's identity information associated with the pharmaceutical data being processed. However, the data being processed is not limited to pharmaceutical information. That is, the present invention has applications in numerous fields, such as law, finance or any other field that requires confidentiality.
2. Discussion of Background Information
Up until now, the issue of medical record confidentiality has not been adequately addressed. In order for health care providers to offer the highest level of patient care, it is essential to enlist the trust of patients, specifically with regard to the issue of protecting the confidentiality of any medical information provided in confidence by patients to health care providers. This would include prescription medication information provided to pharmacists.
Pharmacy-based medication compliance programs remind patients when their prescription, as written by their doctor, needs to be refilled and provide patients with information about medication usage, potential side effects, and precautions. Typically, such programs are implemented by providing patients with mailed communications from their local pharmacists at specific intervals during their prescription therapies (e.g., prior to refills coming due). Such pharmacy-based medication compliance programs have proven to be successful at increasing the rate that patients adhere to their physicians' prescribed instructions across multiple therapeutic categories. Some programs have demonstrated increases in compliance on the order of 50% or greater.
Due to the large volume of prescriptions being filled nowadays, pharmacists often need assistance in fulfilling administrative tasks, such as sending patient reminders, so the pharmacists have more time to devote to serving patients at the pharmacy. Thus, pharmacies frequently enlist the assistance of outside parties to implement compliance programs.
Compliance programs help patients to follow their physician's instructions. Without compliance programs, only about half of all prescriptions written each year are taken correctly. The other half are taken incorrectly, by patients who are “non-compliant” with their doctor's prescribed instructions. The term non-compliant is a catch-all phrase referring to any deviation from a prescribed pharmaceutical regimen, including: over-dosing/taking medication too frequently, taking medication at incorrect times of the day, under-dosing and periodic drug holidays, sharing prescribed medicines with others, mixing medicines inappropriately with alcohol, tobacco, certain foods, and other prescribed or over-the-counter remedies, and failing to fill or refill prescriptions altogether.
Taken in total, non-compliance in its many forms exacts a significant toll in unnecessary health care costs, lower quality of patient health, and even lost lives. Conservative estimates from academic researchers, government agencies, and health care industry experts indicate that each year, non-compliance with prescribed pharmaceutical regimens in the United States contributes to: between 6–10% of all hospital admissions; 125,000 deaths in the cardiovascular area alone; over 20 million lost working hours; and between $15–20 billion in avoidable health care costs.
Canada has non-compliance issues similar to those in the United States, and the problem has been studied there as well. In Canada, non-compliance with prescription medications is estimated to cost the health care system between $7 and $9 billion each year in direct and indirect costs. This makes prescription non-compliance one of Canada's largest and most expensive “disease” categories, equivalent to the total cost of coronary heart disease.
The problem of non-compliance is particularly severe in pharmaceutical therapies for chronic, long-term conditions such as hypertension, asthma, epilepsy, and hypercholesterolemia. The predominant form of non-compliant behavior in such long-term therapies is premature discontinuance (i.e., missed refills). In fact, several studies have shown that patient retention rates in long-term therapies decline to 50% over the first six to twelve months of therapy, regardless of the illness or patient setting.
Pharmacists are in perhaps the best position to help patients adhere to their doctor's prescription instructions. Pharmacists are trained to answer questions about prescriptions for their patients and they are always looking for ways to better communicate with their patients. Systems presently exist to facilitate this communication using modem and cost-effective methods that support and reinforce the efforts of today's busy pharmacists. However, such systems require that confidential prescription information be provided to the third parties that are implementing the services.
As previously stated, medication compliance programs often involve the use of outside parties by pharmacies to assist in the program implementation. In order to implement such programs, pharmacies are frequently required to provide patient prescription records to third parties for data processing and analysis. While the confidentiality of these records can be protected by contractual obligations between the pharmacy and the third party, the perception that patient confidentiality may be compromised could exist. Because of the significant health care value of pharmacy-based medication compliance programs, a need exists for a solution that allows pharmacies to implement compliance programs without any real or perceived violation of the confidentiality of patient prescription records.